


You Don't Know Me

by ExyEimi (Siyah_Kedi)



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Assumed Suicide, Drug Use, Eimi can't tag, M/M, More tags to be added, neil gets kidnapped, or write summaries
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-14
Updated: 2018-03-14
Packaged: 2019-03-31 10:37:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,715
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13973277
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Siyah_Kedi/pseuds/ExyEimi
Summary: Someone has it out for Neil, but Andrew is the one who'll suffer.





	1. damned by the existential moment

**You Don’t Know Me**   
_ damned by the existential moment _

 

They’re at Eden’s Twilight, and for once, Roland isn’t there.  It’s the first clue that the night is not going to be as typical as they have been so far, but Neil’s more interested in the fact that Andrew is finally taking their games seriously of his own volition.  Kevin is beyond pleased as well, and Neil has been digging his fingernails into his palms with the effort to let Kevin and Andrew work themselves out and not interfere. Wymack – everyone, actually, now that he thinks about it – thinks he can tell Andrew what to do, and that Andrew will listen to him, but it’s got more to do with their strange arrangement than anything else, and Neil isn’t ready to give up any more truths for the moment, because he might let something unfortunate slip. 

Like  _ You mean more to me than Exy. _

Like  _ I never want to leave you. _

Like  _ I’m falling in love with you. _

He’s started keeping a journal to get the thoughts out of his head, and he figured one of the first things Andrew would do when he found out would be to snoop through it, but they’ve come farther than that, and Andrew trusts him enough to give him his privacy.  Some of the old paranoia has never left him, even after a year and a half at Palmetto, and he put a hair onto one of the pages at a specific place as well as a piece of pencil lead in the binding that would crack if anyone opened it, and so far it’s been unbroken every time.  He knows an observant person would see the hair, and take pains to put it back, but no one’s ever seen him removing or replacing the tiny lead stick and he’s starting to think he can relax some of his paranoid habits. 

Nicky and Aaron disappear with Kevin into the crowd of people to seek out a table while Neil follows Andrew to the bar.  Roland’s absence means they actually have to place their orders, and the new bartender raises one eyebrow, and then both, when the litany of drinks carries on beyond the first six.  He doesn’t protest, however, and Neil takes the first tray as soon as it’s loaded up, working his way through the throng with semi-practiced ease. Kevin Day stands out in any crowd, and Neil fixes his eyes on him and uses him as a homing beacon to find the table they claimed.  Aaron and Kevin are plucking shot glasses off the tray before he even sets it down, and Neil wonders what might be wrong. Andrew is at his side a second later, bearing another tray, and Neil knows because the entire left side of his body is tingling with awareness that’s purely physical before Andrew even comes into his line of sight.  This new physical reaction to Andrew is something he’s only started noticing in the last few weeks, and he’s still wondering what changed. The cracker dust from Sweetie’s makes an appearance, and Andrew makes a show of offering one to Neil. Wanting to unbalance Andrew as much as he’s unbalanced Neil, Neil takes one, and jaws drop all around the table. 

“What the fuck, Neil?”  Nicky asks first, but his tone is nearly overwhelmingly joyful rather than accusatory. “Neil, seriously?” 

Neil only has eyes for Andrew, who has narrowed his.  Before Neil can register movement, Andrew has slammed his hand down onto the table, and Neil can feel the pressure of the little packet of dust in his palm and something sticky on the table where it wasn’t wiped down properly.  His skin is tingling where Andrew’s fingers are grinding into the bones, and hazel eyes are piercing. 

“Yes or no, Neil,” Andrew says, and there’s death in his voice if Neil says the wrong thing. It threatens to make Neil smile, but that would be construed all wrong at the moment as the others are staring in silence at the little drama playing out in front of them.  

“Yes, Andrew,” and even his fucking tongue tingles at the feeling of Andrew’s name on it, what the  _ fuck _ is wrong with him? 

Andrew stares for an eternity, but then withdraws his hand.  Neil curls his fingers around the packet, and suddenly rethinks the decision to try this on his own terms.  Andrew will kill him if he changes his mind, he tells himself, after saying he was doing it willingly. Nicky is babbling in the background, but the world has dwindled to just Neil and Andrew’s heavy stare.  Neil wonders what could be going on behind those implacable eyes as he tears open the package with the rest of them and dumps it onto his tongue. It’s sickeningly sweet, and he has flashbacks to Nicky’s tongue in his mouth, nearly gagging, but he doesn’t let himself slow down before he’s picking up a shot glass and chasing the sugary tart powder down into his stomach.  

As before, its only moments before his head starts swimming, the colors in the club turning bright and sharp and cold all around him as the drugs start working their way into his system along with the alcohol.  Meeting for occasional drinks with the upperclassmen means his tolerance has gone beyond  _ immediately sick _ , and his brain is beginning to associate the taste of whisky with Andrew and Kevin instead of bloody stitches and his mother’s furious voice at his ear, but it’s an unpleasant taste nonetheless.  Kevin is still knocking back shots one after the other, apparently trying to get through all of them before anyone else – old habits die hard as Neil very well knows – and Nicky is chatting amiably with Aaron.  Neil’s attention is focused entirely on Andrew as his blood turns sluggish in his veins, heating him up from the center outward. Andrew meets his gaze steadily, but Neil knows he’s aware of everything around him, and it’s a comfort.  

Or at least it is until another tray of drinks settles down on the table between them and Andrew startles.  Neil blinks slowly – everything feels like it’s moving in slow motion now, too bright and too loud and too distant, and Neil is already regretting his decision to try the cracker dust and take back an unpleasant memory – and then turns to see who put it down, expecting Kevin.  It’s the bartender.

“Roland’s friends, right?” he asks.  “On the house.” 

Nicky thanks him exuberantly, and Neil reaches for the nearest glass, hoping it’s something besides whisky or vodka.  It is, and he doesn’t know what it could be, but it’s smooth and dark and heavy on his tongue in the same way Andrew’s eyes are heavy on his face.  Andrew knocks his back in one go, swallowing continuously, and Neil is drawn by the motion of his throat, reaching out before he’s consciously decided to touch.  He  _ knows _ Andrew despises being touched without consent, and that he’ll be even stricter tonight with Neil under the influence of cracker dust and alcohol and technically unable to give consent of his own, but the pale column of Andrew’s throat has captured his attention and won’t release it.  It takes a thousand years – its microseconds, nanoseconds – before the tips of his fingers brush Andrew’s skin. The full-body shudder Andrew gives might be a warning sign, or it might be because Andrew has a neck thing, but he doesn’t say anything. Andrew puts the glass down and glowers at Neil as only Andrew can, never beyond his own limits no matter how much he drinks, and three shots and a glass aren’t enough to get him anywhere near those limits.  Neil, on the other hand, is already gone, eyes blown wide, lips parted, still fixated on Andrew’s neck. 

“No, Neil,” Andrew says, just loudly enough to be heard over the throbbing bass and nearby conversations.  Neil’s hand is back in his own lap before Andrew finishes talking, almost without his own will. His lips curve.

“I’m well trained, you see,” he says in return.  And then before he can stop himself, his thoughts are spilling past his lips.  “Couldn’t quite help it. You look beautiful tonight.” 

Actually, finding someone to knock him out before he says anything else is beginning to sound like a good idea, certainly better than trying to take back the memory of drugs was.  His past-self apparently knew what he was about. 

Andrew’s lips curve into a sneer, but his eyes are untouched, and Neil knows there’s a battle going on behind the façade, can almost hear it –  _ Tell him he’s an idiot, tell him to fuck off, make fun of him, say nothing –  _ and then the sneer widens into something almost amused.  Neil hasn’t seen that look on his face since he came off the prescription drugs almost a year ago.  Andrew’s eyes and mouth still aren’t acting in concert with one another, his lips tugged into a wide grin as his eyes are narrowing, lit from behind with anger and something Neil can’t identify.  He turns the mixed-up expression on the glass he’d just drained at the same moment a heavy  _ thump _ shudders through the table.  Neil can feel joints grinding against themselves as he turns to look, and taking his eyes off Andrew is almost a painful thing, but Aaron is face-down on the table, nothing in his eyes.  Next to him, Nicky is slumped backwards, head tilted at an impossible angle, and Kevin is nowhere to be found, but Neil’s instincts are screaming at him. Something is terribly, horribly wrong.  Andrew sucks in air like he’s drowning, and sways – the gentlest of motions that is still a deafening siren of danger in Neil’s peripheral vision, drawing his attention back just as Andrew –  _ Andrew _ – slumps down in his chair, head lolling backwards as consciousness fades.  Neil’s heart is hammering against his ribs, but everything is happening in slow motion, and his body feels like the wires have been cut.  He thinks about reaching out for Andrew, but his hands don’t move. The lights dance in his eyes, blinding him to everything except Andrew’s still form, and finally his arm is reaching, he can see his own hand at the end of it, scarred and damaged but still whole.  It feels like watching someone else in a movie. This is way more than the crackers, and Neil reluctantly comes to the same conclusion Andrew had – there was something more in those drinks the strange bartender brought, someone’s targeting them – and then he’s sinking, drowning, screaming silently for Andrew to get back up and  _ help him _ but there’s someone else at his side, hands on his waist tugging him ungently from the stool, fingers digging into his skin as he sags under the weight of his own body.  It’s the last clear sensation he has for a very long time. 


	2. it was we who were the cliché

**You Don’t Know Me**   
_ it was we who were the cliché _

 

Andrew wakes up like nothing’s wrong, just like he always does – a bone-deep knowledge that someone’s standing over him, a fist moving before his eyes are open, but he doesn’t connect with anything – and then blinks to find out why he was so off the mark.  Kevin is standing over him, far enough away that there was no danger of being struck, his skin tinged grey with an emotion Andrew can’t process. His head is throbbing, pounding in time with his pulse, and all he knows immediately is that he doesn’t know where he is.  He looks around quickly, and sees Nicky snoring on an ugly duvet, clutching his pillow. Aaron is just visible on Nicky’s other side, his hair sticking up and glinting white in the light pouring in through an unfamiliar window. Andrew turns again, gaze passing over Kevin like he’s invisible, looking for their unintended fifth.  There’s an empty spot on the bed beside him, an indentation on the pillow, and Andrew is going to be sick. There’s an empty spot in his memory, too. His hands go to his sleeves automatically, and the relief of his knives is short-lived as he returns his gaze to Kevin. 

“What – the –  _ fuck _ –” His stomach is churning, his head is still under attack by a jackhammer, Neil isn’t there, and he has no idea where he is or how he got there or what happened in between.  The last clear memory of the night before is Neil, exasperation clear on his face, saying  _ Yes, Andrew, _ meaning yes, he’s going to take these drugs of his own volition, although Andrew has no idea why.  Neil’s voice is fond, his eyes crinkling in the corners as he almost smiles at Andrew’s rabid over-protectiveness, and Andrew is  _ almost _ disappointed that they won’t be doing anything back at the house, because he knows Neil knows he won’t let anything happen until Neil can give consent.  

“I don’t know,” Kevin says, wrenching Andrew out of his memories and back into the present.  He’s trembling, shaking hard enough to rattle his own teeth, and wraps his arms around himself.  “I don’t know. I woke up just a minute ago, next to you. I don’t know where we are, or how we got here.” Echoes of Riko’s madness are flickering in his eyes, and Andrew would be concerned if Neil hadn’t told them what really happened,  _ Riko’s dead, executed _ , and so are Neil’s personal demons, so it should have been safe for them to come out even if accepting strange drinks was a mistake.  

_ Hindsight is 20/20, _ Andrew thinks, and then moves before he knows he’s going to, lunging for the door he can see just behind Kevin and is assuming it’s a bathroom.  It is, but he doesn’t make it to the toilet, retching into the sink as his circumstances crash back in on him. He can hear Nicky stretching loudly, grunting and popping as he moves, and Aaron’s quiet bitching as Nicky wakes him up.  Nothing’s come out of his mouth, not even bile, but Andrew still feels saliva flooding him as his stomach turns again. He raises his eyes to the mirror, examining himself for fresh bruises, or strange marks, and remembers Neil’s fingers on his throat.  He remembers Neil snatching them back as soon as Andrew tells him no. And he remembers this feeling from the spring, the bone-deep feeling that Neil is gone – has run? Been taken? – and isn’t coming back. Bee called it fear. Andrew heaves. 

His eyes are bloodshot, although from the drugs or the not-puking, he can’t tell.  Kevin’s behind him, eyes so wide that there’s white visible all around vivid green irises.  Further back, Aaron and Nicky are beginning to realize something’s wrong, that they’re in a strange hotel room, and neither one can recall how they got there.  

“Where’s Andrew?” It’s Aaron’s voice, tight and afraid.  Andrew almost wants to laugh. Aaron’s afraid for him. He twists the taps viciously and cups his hands to take a drink.  His stomach settles almost as soon as the water hits it, and Andrew straightens, pushing Kevin out of his way to re-enter the bedroom.  

“Here,” he says, and Aaron’s naked relief is written all across his face.  Andrew’s fingers curl into a fist at his side. 

“Andrew?” Nicky this time.  “Where are we? What happened?  Where’s Neil?” 

Good questions, all of them.  Too bad Andrew has no answers.  

 

*

 

It turns out they’re not far from the club, and the room has been paid for two nights.  All their money, phones, other possessions are still on their persons, and the only real problem is that Neil is missing, which means its Neil who was targeted.  Andrew is out on the walkway in front of their unexpected hotel room, steadily working his way through a pack of cigarettes while Nicky, Aaron, and Kevin take turns explaining to Wymack and the others what happened.  He’s blank and empty, but it’s a very weak dam holding back a tsunami; he hasn’t exploded yet because his feelings are too large to be contained in his body for the moment. Anger is closest to the surface; anger that they’d been so easy to take down – drugs in the drinks, of course – anger that Neil is such a magnet for trouble and Andrew hadn’t seen this one coming.  Right on its heels are things he can’t fully identify. An ice-cold fear that Neil has taken off running, that Neil was complicit somehow, that Neil is dea – 

He cuts his own thoughts off viciously.  

If there’s one thing he knows for certain, it’s that Neil wouldn’t have run.  Last year, perhaps, but not now. With one thing off his plate, Andrew considers the other options.  Neil had surprised them all by taking the cracker dust, and Andrew wanted to know why – would have preferred to know it was going to happen before it did, or he wouldn’t have offered the packet, even jokingly – and worked through it to decipher if Neil had been acting strangely.  He comes up with  _ no. _  Neil had his reasons, of that Andrew is absolutely sure, probably to do with the first time they’d gone to Eden’s and Andrew drugged him to get his secrets.  Bee said one facet of therapy is reenactment – Andrew doesn’t want to go there, but he thinks perhaps Neil was trying to undo bad memories of cracker dust and Andrew, and if he hadn’t gone missing, they’d safe at the house, maybe kissing right now, maybe more, maybe just talking about  _ why _ Neil felt the need to participate in the dust after he’d made his feelings abundantly clear.  

This brings Andrew to option three.  Someone else drugged them to get Neil out from under their noses, but why go through the hassle of setting them up in a hotel room?  Why not leave them in the club, or outside, or dead? He can’t answer any of it without more information. Why? More importantly,  _ who? _  Wesninski’s old group?  The Moriyamas? Hell, even a rival team?  Neil was shaping up to wipe the floor with Breckenridge at next week’s game, could it be an inter-university prank-gone-wrong?  _ But why the hotel room? _

Andrew stubs out the cigarette and re-enters the room.  Nicky is pale and drawn, Kevin still looks like a corpse walking around with no blood in his body, and Aaron is breathing deeply and purposefully, probably trying to stave off a panic attack.  

Andrew can’t stand the sight of them.  “Anything?”

“No one’s heard anything,” Kevin tells him.  “But we’re going back to campus.”

“We can’t just –” Nicky cuts himself off.  Andrew finishes for him. 

“Can’t just leave Neil, can we?”  He’s feeling vicious and furious and scared, and he is going to kill whoever is behind this, if only for making him feel this way.  “Neil knows his way home.” 

Nicky hears the anger, and misplaces it.  “You can’t think  _ Neil _ is behind this,” he gasps.  

“No,” Andrew says.  They’re all waiting for something else, but Andrew is going to start throwing knives if they don’t get moving.  He walks back out of the room and keeps going. His keys are still in his pocket, and the club is just around the corner.  The Maserati is still in the parking lot, a white paper tucked into the windshield. Andrew thinks it could be a ticket, but it’s just a note.  Behind him, probably Kevin, he hears a sharp inhale as they take it in, and he knows they’re all thinking the same thing.  _ Ransom note, perhaps? _

Andrew snatches it off the car, and nearly tears it in half.  It’s just a stock note saying not to tow the car and that the owners have decided to take a cab instead of driving drunk.  There’s something written on the back, however, that draws Andrew’s attention. 

_ Striker down. _

 

*

 

It’s been thirty-five hours since Neil disappeared from the club, and Andrew is ready to burn the world down.  There’s no sign of him at all. Andrew takes a call from an unknown number, hoping without daring to call it hope, but to his surprise, it’s Ichirou Moriyama.  This is the first time they’ve spoken. 

“I understand you are missing your teammate.” 

Andrew bites back a snarled response, and then takes a deep breath to swallow the next reaction, which is to blame Moriyama.  “How do you know?” His voice is almost calm. 

“I keep an eye on my investments.” 

_ Investments. _  Like Neil is a government bond.  “Do you know what happened to him?” Andrew asks, and then he suddenly has everyone’s attention.  A hand in the air stops their inevitable wave of questioning. 

“No.”  The answer is no answer at all.  “I only know what I’m seeing on my security cameras at the moment.” 

Andrew is already moving, nearly breaking Kevin’s laptop as he forces it open, and waits with heavy silence on the other end of the phone as it boots up.  “Show me,” he says, and Moriyama – unofficial ruler of the east coast, with power and money beyond anything Andrew could even  _ imagine _ backing him up, someone who even  _ Riko _ feared – actually does as he’s requested.  Kevin’s email notification pops up in the corner of the screen, and Andrew clicks on it, bringing up a video feed to a narrow alleyway.  There’s a small crowd of people, but there’s enough space in their center that Andrew can make out the tiny, familiar body of Neil Josten.  

There’s a puddle of darkness around his head, and Andrew drops the phone.  Oxygen rakes over his throat like knives as he stares at the scene on the video feed.  There’s just too much blood. Neil is in an unnatural position, his body clearly broken.  Andrew’s mind refuses to supply the word. Under his hands, Kevin’s desk chair snaps as his fingers clench on it.  Everything in the world is gone, except for the sight of an ambulance arriving, paramedics lifting a stretcher to the ground beside Neil and carefully examining him.  Andrew doesn’t take another breath until they start snapping a neck brace on him, certain that if he was de – if he wasn’t alive, they wouldn’t bother with being gentle.  The feed cuts off, and so does Andrew’s connection to consciousness. 


End file.
